Focus of 2017

SOCIAL ENTERPRISES & MIGRATION – WHY?

The migration challenge is undoubtedly perceived as one of the greatest of our times. The Boat Camp does not, nor could it ever have the aim of investigating the complexities of this challenge and the dynamics of the migration flows, with its myriad of underlying causes and roots, but instead, while shaping inclusive business training sessions, focuses on the role played by social business in successfully dealing with this challenge.
The overwhelming unfolding of refugees and migrants’ flows has captured the attention of the many and unlock a significant amount of collective thinking and resources. A wide variety of projects and enterprises have been launched and consolidated with the objective of addressing the first relief emergency need leaving the opportunity to go beyond the “shelter and food” paradigm, uncovered. It is exactly this space that deserves the most brilliant thoughts and business thinking.

How can refugees and migrants unleash their potential and find a decent work in the receiving countries?

How the local communities can get engaged and benefit by the “diversity dividend” ? How a new and more inclusive economy can be built?

And it is precisely these issues, questions and considerations that have led to the idea of the Boat Camp : In what way, to what extent, and how much are social enterprises dealing with the solution of these problems?

The overall training is aimed at providing soft and hard skills to the participants, while exposing them to constructive and engaging talks with the leading players in the space of innovation addressing the migration challenge.
The workshops will be focused on specific mgmt. tools, instrumental in making the business solid and growing. The business cases will show case effective practices in different fields (branding, storytelling, partnerships, funding, impact measurement, technology). Industry experts, migrant and local forward-thinking entrepreneurs, migrants who have taken control of their lives again, will bring their contributions and say.
Furthermore, the training sessions will provide ideas on how social enterprises tackling the migration challenge can develop, grow, create jobs and become replicable, scalable, profitable and self-sustainable models to position on the market.
The Boat Camp 2017 has been purposely chosen with the aim of uniting and linking these two themes together and encourage deeper reflection on the potential of social enterprises as agents of change and find out solutions that could really make a difference to the migration challenge and turn it around from being considered an emergency – a problem to be tackled – to a generative opportunity for building a more fair and equal future.
The Boat Camp is the perfect opportunity to create a network of different skills and experiences, share best practices, and share the social experiments and strategies that have been implemented in various regions of the planet.
This also leads to another question: could social enterprises represent an important, valid and interesting option in terms of professional integration and creation of new job opportunities? Are there any social enterprises in Italy, Europe or the world that are founded, managed and organised entirely by refugees, asylum seekers or migrants? Which social enterprises provide appropriate solutions to this population? Which social enterprises have been specifically founded to support migrants, meeting their aspirations and urgent needs? What is the role of diasporas and migrants in fostering inclusive businesses in their new countries of residence and their countries ?
The Boat Camp is an opportunity for discussion and learning, an intense 2 days long training session, where there are no textbook answers or readymade solutions, only frank peers to peers activities looking at the catalytic role of market based solutions, and management tools. At the heart the what, how and who in successfully running a business that can deploy substantial social impact and make a difference.